Tag: expat in italy

The second Sunday in September will go down as the day in which both the oven and the dishwasher broke down.

Of course, an oven never fails when you’re not trying to use it. I had made a plum pie (see here) and was halfway through cooking the roast chicken and potatoes when it conked out.

We knew we were living on borrowed time because we’ve already bade farewell to the kettle, the toaster, the DVD player and a second kettle… but I really did believe that the larger appliances would make it through another six months before we move into the new house.

I’m now waiting for the electrician to come over and assess the extent of the damage. Now if there’s any universal truth which always – and I mean, always – proves correct it’s that electricians, plumbers and delivery guys don’t show up on time. Our guy was supposed to come yesterday… he didn’t… if he comes today, well, let’s hope so but I’m not holding my breath.

The boy and I got hit with a stomach bug this weekend. After just a half-day in the vineyards, we came home and he camped out on the sofa because it was closer to the bathroom whilst I battled a fever from underneath the duvet. Whoever said romance is dead!

By the next day, some paracetamol had helped the fever and the aches but it was still too early to venture out. It’s at times like these that I miss having a TV; to be curled up on the sofa watching a film or some silly television would be perfect. I’ve been TV-free for the best part of 6 years. I occasionally miss BBC Breakfast, but fortunately hearing the clipped accents on BBC World Service sees off any homesickness.

As it is, the boy pulls out his magazine of choice “Tractor People” and I set about googling “kitchen design.”

At the beginning of the building works, I had a pretty clear idea of how I wanted the kitchen to be and what sort of appliances, finishes and features it should have. As time goes on, that dream is slipping away. I seem unable to convey those desires in a way that the kitchen designer in front of me is able to transform them successfully. This isn’t necessarily because of any limited language skills, more that these people have selected suppliers that they work with and I haven’t yet found the right person who can source the right kind of elements for me.

As I was browsing online, to find images to show the designers, it became very clear what I don’t want!

Ok, yes, the above photo is beautiful (in its way) but as a room in my house, it would drive me mental. It’s too quaint and too busy. I love some of the old pieces of furniture and want to use some of those touches but give me something more sleek….

This however, is totally unfeasible. As a living space, it’s very elegant but if I’m being realistic, after a couple of months and once everything has been unpacked, the room is actually going to look like this. 🙂

How is it so difficult to have something discreet and functional yet also pretty… a little bit like this?

On a more serious note, I’m waiting to hear back from a couple of new people. Let’s see if either of them are able to capture my idea and turn it into something that we can use. Watch this space.

“What do you mean, the old men of the village don’t come over to take a look at a building site in the UK?” asked my Italian friend, bewildered.

I was asking why, over the last month or so, a stream of people have walked, driven and peered over at our ongoing – and increasing – collection of bricks and dust. It would appear that putting up a crane is the equivalent of sending out a round of party invitations.

“But you’ve put up a wall?” this grey-haired, heavily-accented villager exclaimed disappointedly, having stepped across the threshold into what will become our new home. “Before it was all open-plan: entrance, kitchen, living room, all together…”

I briefly run him through the plans: this downstairs area will become a hidden laundry room, wine cellar and additional food storage space. I conveniently leave out the fact that the architect had initially wanted to put in another dividing wall to make this space even more fragmented. Continue reading “The Return of the Goat”→

Setting up life in a new country is never simple. That said, it’s been almost exactly one year since I made the decision to move and I don’t regret it at all. For every “that didn’t work out the way I thought it would” set-back (I wouldn’t go so far as to say failure, although some ideas did fail), I’ve made a huge, astronomical leap forward.

What is rather strange, when I reflect on it, is how the best things to have occurred to me didn’t happen because of or due to any of my own calculations. They occurred purely by chance.

My four-legged companion, who is currently snoozing by my side, found me. She had been abandoned one night on the top of a hill, aged just two and a half or three months, and she sniffed out the winery where I was staying. She announced her presence by, unwittingly, causing a huge fray with the winemaker’s (rather aggressive) German Shepherd. By the time we took her to the vet the next morning, it was too late – love at first sight!

People said, “are you really going to keep her? What will you do when you travel? What about that wild nomadic lifestyle you have? You don’t even have a proper house to call your own.”

I will admit that I woke up at 4am the morning after making the decision in a cold sweat. I grew up with dogs and I knew that I wanted them in my future too, but this was much sooner than planned. Wasn’t I supposed to be settled first? “What have I done?! They’re right. Oh ****!”

The man then lying next to me (fast asleep) still doesn’t know the important role he played in those deliberations that night.

He too was a chance encounter. We came across each other three times (we both work in the same industry, in a part of Italy that’s as big as the back of an envelope) before he asked me out.

For him as well, it turns out, I was completely unexpected but happened to arrive at a fortuitous moment. He had recently come out of a very long relationship, a partnership so established that it seemed unfathomable to me. (See “wild nomadic lifestyle” above!)

“You’re the first girl I’ve been on a date with since breaking up…”

After our second date, I initiate a heart-to-heart conversation about if he wanted to jump straight into another relationship. “With you, yes.”

We’d only been seeing each other for a month or two when I wake up in that panic. It was my gut feeling as I watched him sleeping which convinced me to keep the dog. I could see a future here with those two in the leading roles.

I would have had neither the man nor the dog had I not left everything behind and made a leap of faith. Having been single or chasing after the wrong men for most of my twenties, permanently renting apartments, this feels like a very healthy step to have made.

I knew what I wanted: to leave France, to leave the city and to settle down in a rural region, where I could continue to work in wine. I was fully expecting to have to go it alone – I was looking at houses to buy, wondering how I would set myself up and if I could make it all work despite Brexit. But just this once, life played me a good card.

Picture an old house, on a hill, in the lush Italian countryside, completely surrounded by vineyards. Sounds idyllic, right?

Especially if you’ve seen or read “Under The Tuscan Sun” you’ll already have indulged yourself in a fantasy of doing up a house in Italy. Read this superb article in The New Yorker if you’re under any doubt of the power of this perceived paradise.

My move to Italy was nothing like that. I arrived, knowing only that a winemaker would be putting me up for a few months. I knew nobody else in the area but when you are working harvest, you don’t have time to be bored! I had thrown caution to the wind and let fate decide my future.

As it happens, the order in which things worked out for me is very different from that commonly portrayed in the films: only once I was here, did I meet the dream man (meaning that I chose to stay in Italy.) Then the puppy arrived (she found us) and that prompted me to settle down but she now rewards me daily with her company and then the house, which is our current project and the point of today’s blog post.

For the sake of keeping Under The Tuscan Sun film within two hours, no mention was made of the hurdles of legislation that you’re going to have to jump through when renovating a house in Italy.

Let’s do a quick quiz to see how realistic you are!

So imagine that you are the new owner of this dream-house. Because it is actually close to falling down, you have to do some renovation works on it. You have an architect, engineer and a trusted workforce. However, the local comune has decided that this old house has “historical value” and therefore must be protected.

Question 1: What can or can’t you do with this house?

a. Because the house is protected, there’s nothing much more you can do than a few cosmetic touch-ups. It’s protected after all.

b. You can restore the existing structure and build a relatively large extension for your guests once they come to stay in the finished house.

c. Demolish the building completely but you have to build it again to the exact, same, precise dimensions.

Question 2: There are tons of building regulations in Italy and an expert from the comune will come to check that the works have followed the proposal to the last square centimeter. What changes or exceptions are allowed?

a. You can use these renovation works to put a door where there was previously a window and vice versa…

b. Ok, you don’t want a really large extension… but you would like to put in another couple of rooms, which would correspond to an increase of roughly 25% in terms of surface area.

c. When rebuilding your protected-but-demolished house, you can raise the height of the roof a certain amount but only to put in earthquake protection measures and isolation panels.

Question 3: In Under The Tuscan Sun, Frances Meyer found a wonderful, original fresco in her villa. In this old country house, what did we find?

a. Authentic mosaic flooring.

b. Absolutely nothing exciting.

c. A dead goat’s skull.

ANSWERS: In all three questions, the answer is the final option. You can demolish an old house as long as it is rebuilt to spec; we’ve only been able to raise the roof for the cement anti-earthquake structure and, yes, we found a goat’s skull!!

You think something’s going to be ok because previous experience has taught you how it’s done. Well, moving to Italy means putting all that “I’ve got this figured out” attitude aside and being prepared to eat a lot of humble pie.

After a while, however long it takes for to train your brain cells to think quickly, it gets slightly easier. For example…

Exhibit A: You want to buy some stamps. Most days, I add on “… and two stamps please” to my coffee order at the local bar.

“Ah, no, we don’t have any stamps today,” comes the reply on this particular occasion. “Try the place down the street…”

Turns out that the place further down the street doesn’t have any stamps either. I’m going to have to go into one of Dante’s circles of hell: the Post Office.

It is approaching 11am. There are two workers manning the windows. I wait 20 minutes in line for my turn, only to be told that I need to wait and speak with his colleague.

Another 15 minutes goes by (… by which point my dog is really fed up!) only for me to be told “signora, we don’t have any stamps.”

“What? You’re a Post Office! How the hell is that possible” goes through my mind, but fortunately the only audible sound I make is a surprised “ma, veramente?”

“Si, si, mi dispiace, ciao, arrivederci signora…”

My dog takes the hint and gets up to leave. I, unfortunately, am not going to be defeated so easily. Not after having spent the best part of my morning trying to send these two letters.

“But could you, maybe…” I am aware I have to get the next word exactly right or I will find myself back out on the street a second later… “affrancare my letters?”

With a sigh, the lady backs down. My knowledge of the outdated postal system (I think the last time a letter of mine was franked was at least 20 years ago!) has meant that her coffee break will have to be postponed for another few minutes. Victory!!

Exhibit B: Taking your bicycle in Florence also means having a bag full of accessories (tissues, water, puncture kit, umbrella) that even Mary Poppins would have been proud of. You need to be equipped for every possible situation. In my case, I got in the habit of taking multiple bike locks (even if I didn’t have the corresponding key, like for the red lock below) because you never know when they might come in handy.

On this particular occasion, the railing to which I wanted to attach my bike was set a long way back into the cement wall. As a result, it required three chains, looped together, to secure my bike…. as you can see in the photo below.

Problem solved!

Exhibit C: There are two temporary signs on the street saying “no parking for building works”. These two signs happen to fall neatly on a defined orange zone. I asked an Italian friend yesterday who confirmed that the signs indicate the beginning and end of the space needed. I parked my car in the adjacent blue zone.

Just now, upon checking on the car, the builders tell me I need to move it. I maintain that I’m parked on the correct side of the sign. They shrug, in that “do I look bothered” way, saying they could just move the sign further up the street and therefore my car would be parked illegally.

I ask how much extra space they need. One of the builders is telling me that the official rule in this kind of matter – didn’t I know? – was up to the nearest lamppost. Yet his colleague signals to the parking meter, thereby superbly negating this supposed Italian rule of the road.

In any case, the difference is no more than a foot and there’s almost a yard between me and the car in front. I suggest, rather that looking for a new spot (impossible in Florence at this time of the morning anyway), that I simply close up this gap. They convene to consider the suggestion.

By the time they’re somewhere close to an agreement, I’ve already started the engine and am inching forward. In the end, once I’m sufficiently close to my neighbour’s bumper, they give me the thumbs up.

You may remember from my post ten days ago (Building A Life) that building works have started recently on the house next-door.

Consequently, my daily routine has now been set to a soundtrack of drilling, banging and grinding of heavy machinery. It starts at 7am and plays on loop until 5pm, with just one hour of respite.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the sun has recently revved into gear and it’s now blasting us with temperatures which reach 30 degrees (86 Fahrenheit) by lunchtime. Have you ever been in a sauna while thrash metal music is playing? It’s not pleasant, let me tell you.

In these sultry conditions, the English idea of pudding is just far too much. Instead, the end of a lunch is signaled by a coffee (espresso, of course) and a tablespoon of ice cream. This is definitely something I could get used to.

Harder, however, is the daily decision of what to wear. My loose linen trousers are already too heavy for the midday heat. I really need to make an appointment to be able to bare my legs in public.

Another daily challenge is our Internet connection. It has become so slow that Spotify can’t even stream my playlists anymore. I’ve resorted to listening to CDs from the early Naughties in order to drown out the builders.

It’s not even just our builders. It turns out that the owners of the house across the way have been inspired by our works to finish their own. In true Italian style, their house was completely renovated not so long ago but came to an abrupt halt. Word at the local café says that the two couples who wanted to live together ran out of money and started arguing. (Before you raise an eyebrow, this seems to be a relatively common living arrangement here in Italy…) So just in terms of heavy machinery in my immediate vicinity, there are four diggers, one roller and countless trucks…

This makes my situation all the more precarious because the conclusion of the hole in the wall (see previous post) and the incessant digging of next-door’s foundations has revealed that the house that I’m currently living in and working from has been built without any foundations! It’s just sitting upon a large slab of hard volcanic rock! Not entirely reassuring….. but then again, everything in Italy is somewhat of a gamble!

The words for hammer (martello) and complete disaster (macello) sound very similar in Italian. Impeded by my slumber, I hold out a hope that they have just popped over to ask to borrow something from our utility cupboard.

The man standing next to this wizened, dust-covered, bearer of bad news shrugs indifferently.

If you’ve seen the film “Under The Tuscan Sun” – or had any experience with builders in Italy – you wouldn’t be at all surprised that on the very first day of the building works, there was an unexpected surprise. In this case, the fact that they had come right through the wall and into our bedroom!

With another couple more shrugs and the beyond-believable excuse “but we thought there were two walls….” they left to go and start hammering on another section of wall.

An architect, an engineer and another opinionated old man with a cigarette always hanging out of his mouth will come over in the morning to reassess the situation.

“Hey Emma, you remember we’re leaving at 10am….” whispers the boy, “… well, it’s almost 9am and you still have that cake to do!”

The done thing in Italy on the 1st May (Labour Day) is to organise a day-out in the countryside. It doesn’t matter if you’re already living in rural countryside, surrounded by vineyards…. there’s always somewhere more remote for you to escape to.

Most days I’m up by 8am but we’d been at the Gusto Nudo festival in Bologna the day before and had only got home in the early hours of Monday morning.

For the holiday, we were going up into the mountains above Vicenza (where Asiago cheese is made) to a friend’s house. It may just be in this particular area of Italy, but holidays and special occasions here are often marked by a grigliata or BBQ.

In the UK, when someone organises a BBQ, you expect an outdoor charcoal grill, an undercooked sausage and, if you’re lucky, some red peppers and halloumi on a kebab stick. Almost inevitably, a rain shower will also be on the menu.

Here in Italy, a grigliata is most often cooked on a large indoor fireplace. Old country houses are equipped with a wood-burning hearth on which you can cook all manner of meats – spare ribs, chicken, pancetta – and, of course, polenta. Polenta is everywhere in the Veneto.

Two other girls were bringing savoury sides; we took wine (you never run dry with a winemaker) and I had been put forward for making a dessert.

I’m really bad at cakes. I find them way too stressful. I prefer the kind of dishes that you can adjust during the cooking process rather than putting a mixture into the oven and praying to the gods of baking.

As a compromise (and also because I had very limited ingredients at home) I decided upon a Bakewell Tart.

If you’re not familiar with a Bakewell Tart, it’s a traditional English cake, made of shortcrust pastry, jam and an almond sponge.

I used Mary Berry’s recipe for the shortcrust pastry, used a mixture of different jams (predominantly blackberry, made from the brambles surrounding our vineyards) and an almond-heavy sponge on top.

I didn’t have time to fuss around with icing…. I just scattered some sliced almonds on top of the filling before it went into the oven. Considering I was so rushed, I was rather pleased with how it turned out.

I learnt the Italian way of indicating “it’s tasty”: to put your index finger on your cheek and turn it back and forth!

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My Other Blog: Got Legs

Once you start to scratch the surface, wine is so much more than a drink. Of course, there is what you see on a shop shelf as your eye has been caught by a flashy label and you pause to think about varietals and food pairings… but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You […]